Small Potatoes

There was a Nazi rally in Neukölln—this is Berlin, which means there’s always some kind of Nazi thing happening. They were targeting a Pirate Party member of the city council, someone they’d been harassing for months, and the harassment had escalated into the kind of ugliness that becomes normal if you’re not careful.

What made me angry wasn’t the Nazis so much as the city council. They were planning to pass a statement supporting the counter-protesters while distancing themselves from their own member who was actually doing the organizing. That’s the move that kills you—wanting the moral credit without ever being on your side when it actually matters. They want to look good in the abstract while staying clean in practice.

Someone posted the call: if you’re not working that afternoon, come to the town hall and annoy the fascists. Show up, make noise, don’t let them do their thing. It’s a low bar for resistance but maybe the right one. Treat them like what they are—a minor inconvenience, not the organizing moment they want to be.

I don’t know if enough people showed up. But there was something in that message that stayed with me. Not the moral seriousness of it, but the casual irreverence. Go fuck with Nazis because you have a free afternoon. Don’t make it solemn. Don’t perform the resistance. Just show up and be a problem for them.